Religion thread is brave...
There's no reason why God couldn't make dinosaurs, kick-starting evolution and all that - some people think they're mutually exclusive, but you're right, if God can do anything, why not Dinosaurs?

Some people even think dinosaur fossils are 'tricks' to test our faith or whatever... don't buy that for even a second.

Free will's pretty interesting - If God knows the future, and knows everything that is going to happen, do we really have free will? If God knew that I was going to reply to this thread, does it mean that I freely chose to do it? Problems here...
Also, if God gives us free will, it means he ought to make us responsible for our actions - If we wanted to do something catastrophic, it would deny our free will for him to stop it happening...

I had written a lengthy response when I realized something and deleted it all.

Consider the free will question from the perspective of the mind of God. God is omniscient and therefore knows NOT ONLY everything that humans will do, but also what he himself will do.

If we go by our tentative definition that free will is lost when another entity already knows what you're going to do, then I submit to you that God himself, lacks free will.

As humans, we don't know what will happen to us next or what decisions we will make in the future. Therefore, I would say that under that same definition of free will, we have a more perfect version of free will than God. This is because our final decision is unknown to us until we make it.

However! Since God is supposedly also omnipotent, shouldn't he be able to create creatures with a perfect form of free will that abides by our definition?

In other words, let's say God created us and yet was able make himself incapable of knowing what his creation would do. Think of it as God flipping a coin... and actually temporarily modifying his own existence such that even He would not know which side was going to land facing up. If he then modified his existence once more after the act of creation such that he DOES know everything we're going to do... that doesn't change the fact that our initial creation gave us free will and that no one, not even God, knew what we would end up doing. Therefore, the fact that he now knows what we'll do means absolutely nothing unless He actually intervenes to change our decision.

It's debated that in the book of Job there is a description of a dinosaur, for me I think it is pretty damn close to one.

Job 40:15-24
New International Version (NIV)
15 “Look at Behemoth,
which I made along with you
and which feeds on grass like an ox.
16 What strength it has in its loins,
what power in the muscles of its belly!
17 Its tail sways like a cedar;
the sinews of its thighs are close-knit.
18 Its bones are tubes of bronze,
its limbs like rods of iron.
19 It ranks first among the works of God,
yet its Maker can approach it with his sword.
20 The hills bring it their produce,
and all the wild animals play nearby.
21 Under the lotus plants it lies,
hidden among the reeds in the marsh.
22 The lotuses conceal it in their shadow;
the poplars by the stream surround it.
23 A raging river does not alarm it;
it is secure, though the Jordan should surge against its mouth.
24 Can anyone capture it by the eyes,
or trap it and pierce its nose?

I kind of leave God out of my whole explanation, because, you know, Epicurus' dilemma and theological noncognitivism and all that. But I do find the idea that free will exists but is bound by the deterministic laws of physics an interesting one -- the idea that our actions are predetermined by how we are physiologically wired, and yet to us, in our finite sphere of understanding, they are simultaneously very much our choice.

As for how apologetics address the existence of dinosaurs, I went to Bob Jones Academy, the high school run by the world's foremost Fundamentalist Protestant university. Their explanation was that fossils are formed primarily by the global flood, and that the earth fundamentally changed in such a way that the few (doubtless ceremonially unclean, so maybe only two?) dinosaurs left could not survive.

If you haven't already, click on the link about Epicurus' Dilemma and read the following:

This is only a dilemma for a philosopher who tries to know God through human knowledge and epistomological observation, which is idolatry. For the true theologian, God transcends the transcendent and cannot be known but by revelation that starts with faith and ends with union.

So... human knowledge is too limited to define God. So we get no definition of God.

So God can be anything I damn well please? Or nothing at all? How do I know it's this guy's version, or that guy's? Or maybe you're both wrong? Or maybe you're both right? Or maybe no one is?

How else do we know anything? If people believe that they are not smart enough to really, truly know the truth, then they'll believe anything you shovel them.

I suppose that's where faith comes in. You'll pardon me for not having much of it.

I would love to direct you to the book "The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch" by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Under the premise of some Discworld fantasy the authors present many scientific arguments and theories of the round world.

I would love to quote the book's chapter on evolution enemies, but I can't.

The point is though that evolution can be backed by real-world evidences (fossils, DNA, bacteria evolution), while the existence of God can't.

Religion is based on belief and the lack of doubt, science is based on doubt and the asking of questions.

God transcends the transcendent and cannot be known but by revelation that starts with faith and ends with union.
So... human knowledge is too limited to define God. So we get no definition of God. So God can be anything I damn well please? Or nothing at all? How do I know it's this guy's version, or that guy's? Or maybe you're both wrong? Or maybe you're both right? Or maybe no one is?

Well, if you're discussing the Christian God, his character and state of being is revealed in biblical scripture. But if you just choose to just believe in some random deity, for whatever reason, then yeah.

@NGH: I suppose that would have to be the basis of your revelation. You'd have to accept on some level that the things that define God and seem to be contradictory really aren't, on some level you just don't understand.

But questions still remain -- which text is right? What about the translation errors? Which scribe is reliable and which isn't? Are there any books that managed to sneak into every canon that are just straight made up?

If you're hinging this all on one passage in Paul's letter to Timothy, I can assure you that he doesn't consider all of his writings to be divinely inspired as he remarks at points in his letters "This is just my opinion", so he'd probably exclude a good bit of the New Testament. What about Esther? It's not even among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Are the inaccuracies about the stay of the Israelites in Egypt divinely inspired? Are the dicked up genealogies divinely inspired? Are the historical inaccuracies about the Romans divinely inspired? How did the post-Chaldean revisionism affect the texts? What about the church councils? What about the Anabaptist agenda?

Maybe there's truth in it all. But historical evidence tells me that book is not 100% accurate cover-to-cover in any canon or translation. I spent a good year in university even after my Fundamentalist education grappling with the weight of the Bible, and at the end of it all I left even more confused and dejected. It only started to make sense when I rejected the infallibility hypothesis.

That's really up to the individual to do their own research and find a proper translation. I can't deny that some versions have errors, and even liberties, and I myself tend to avoid those at any cost. But when you find a near-direct translation there is no issue.

Which scribe is reliable and which isn't?

I'm answering believing you mean ancient scribes. Jewish scribes were very careful with what they considered to be sacred documents. They were famous for their consistent accuracy, really.

Enjoy some copypasta from wikipedia. This is the sort of stuff you'd have to read in history books to know about, though.

They could only use clean animal skins, both to write on, and even to bind manuscripts.

Each column of writing could have no less than forty-eight, and no more than sixty lines.

The ink must be black, and of a special recipe.

They must say each word aloud while they were writing.

They must wipe the pen and wash their entire bodies before writing the most Holy Name of God, YHVH every time they wrote it.

There must be a review within thirty days, and if as many as three pages required corrections, the entire manuscript had to be redone.

The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted, and the document became invalid if two letters touched each other. The middle paragraph, word and letter must correspond to those of the original document.

The documents could be stored only in sacred places (synagogues, etc.).

As no document containing God's Word could be destroyed, they were stored, or buried, in a genizah.

Are there any books that managed to sneak into every canon that are just straight made up?

The canon has been tested by historians hundreds and thousands of times since their conception. As of yet, no evidence has been found to support that theory.

What about Esther? It's not even among the Dead Sea Scrolls

Not sure what you mean by that. It's been discovered in historical documents plenty of times. After all, it's been canonized in the Jewish bible hundreds of years before Christ was even born.

Are the inaccuracies about the stay of the Israelites in Egypt divinely inspired? Are the dicked up genealogies divinely inspired? Are the historical inaccuracies about the Romans divinely inspired?

@NGH: I appreciate your earnest response. The information about the Jewish scribes I had heard before, but they are doubtless the strongest link in the chain, as the Torah and prophecies were passed from generation to generation. I would love to discuss this all with you in depth at some other time.

The early church developed the canon, and it was pretty much standardized by 250 AD.

Translation

When the original text is translated into whatever language, the translators NEVER copy off one text, which could be potentially flawed. There are over 24,000 copies of just the New Testament. Sure there may be mistakes in those 24,000, but the chances of all of them having the same mistake in the same areas? Well you can make your own bets on that.